Last night I attended an Expa event with Scott Belsky. He shared his story and a ton of startup lessons. Scott co-founded Behance and is now a general partner at Benchmark. He also served as a VP of products at adobe when they got acquired. Here are some memorable quotes from the evening.
“Products are like a bonsai—Sometimes you have to cut some of the most beautiful branches to make sure the trunk is healthy.”
“Process is the escriment of misalignment.”
“The easiest decision is not to make a decision.”
“As a leader you have to short circuit your reward system.”
“Acquisitions are like feeding a domesticated lion. You have to aggravate the lion by shaking the meat in front of it, until it finally gets fed up and eats it.”
“Focus on verbs and actions, versus documenting everything.”
And his favorite question to ask people who are raising money, “How do you hire people?”.
This was definitely illuminating, and the timing is so relevant. As I work on Flare, I really have to think about all these things.
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